“Those stitches under my belly hurt, for sure, but what if I… hypothetically, just took manicure scissors, and… was urgently rushed back to hospital for no reason in particular, so to speak?”, — echoed in my head. I was 15. Just out of hospital after hernia surgery, knowing full well they will give me morphine again if I did that.

Yes, they used morphine on a 15-year-old kid. It was a town of 50k people in rural Russia.

Withdrawal syndrome lasted about two weeks that felt like two years. You can't tell if you're asleep or not, you shiver while you constantly think about nothing but morphine, and you're anxious because your grandparents shouldn't know! As if it was ever a 15-year-old kid's fault.

Yes, I, in a way, quit morphine at the age of 15.

The hernia was caused by what my mother did to me, but that's the story for another day.

Sufficiently advanced XML is indistinguishable from satire

I'm stuck.

Quitting smoking/scrolling/youtube/other unhealthy coping mechanisms, taking my prescriptions and exercising every day made my mind free — now it's unobstructed, clear and not hindered in any way.

The problem is, without constant coping, my memory turned into a minefield. I can't think freely, as I constantly stumble upon trauma after trauma that make my heart physically hurt.

With clear mind, I now clearly see what used to lurk in shadows, and I'm terrified of it. I won't go back to smoking and watching youtube ten hours a day.

What should I do?

When depression set in, I thought pain relief lied in getting duller. People I called “stupid” — who lived simple lives filled with alcohol and lack of any talent or purpose — weren't suffering. Better even, they denied the existence of depression.

My “wish” was granted when they prescribed cariprazine. In two months, I lost my ability to read, let alone code.

Before that, even depressed, writing a simple email/password auth was a matter of ten minutes in any of the languages I knew how to do web in (JS, Python, Clojure, PHP). But on cariprazine, I remember myself not quite getting what an HTML form was.

Tell you what… you should never wish to become dumber. When I was smart and depressed, the pain was real, but it felt like… let's say a breakup. When I was dumb and depressed, it felt like being raped with a red-hot soldering iron. Or like being skinned alive. Or like when 100% of your skin is a third-degree burn. The pain weren't listening to me, as my mouth was glued shut as if I was Keanu in the first Matrix movie. You can't say, do or think anything, at all, to ease your pain somehow. You can't even realize that just DMing or calling someone is probably a good idea.

Instead of you vs. despair situation from when you were smart, now it's just despair that is actively melting you, so you two become one. Even time loses its meaning. There is nothing out there but suffering.

If you're smart(er than I was at my lowest), DO cherish it. Losing that will spell disaster. So stay away from substances that can facilitate that loss.

because the house I lived in was quite a hostile environment, and every place after that I rented, I grew up without the feeling of home. I was puzzled by how to acquire it. Should homeownership do the trick?
the answer came swift and unexpected — I got a cat. Now, my home is where my cat is. Simple as that.

When I'm stuck but I need my brain to think, I put on Allan Holdsworth. Immediately decongests my flow and makes my neurons tick faster.

https://youtu.be/IcPbmPM7epY?t=112

humpty dumpty goes for a walk
humpty dumpty walks into the forest where he meets The Lobe
humpty dumpty feels an emotion that isn't invented yet.
“Ƶ͠Ͼ҉ΔǁƼϢΞ҉͘Ͼ́҉Ƽ̶Ξ͠ǁ͘͠Ƶ̵́Δ҉̵̀Ξ͠҉́Δ́͠ϴ̀҉,” — says humpty dumpty.

Say “bug fixes and performance improvements” one more time! I dare you! I double dare you, motherfucker! Say “bug fixes and performance improvements” one more time!

They added Fail Mode to Super Mario Odyssey — a set of ridiculously hard maps where you’re expected to fall down, but your gameplay is recorded, and in-game NPCs laugh at you. But, if you jump really far using boosters from Mario Kart, you can end up in rock climbing mode. When you reach the end, you get to a half-oasis, half-purgatory where there is a poker table, and other NPCs greet you.

There are a lot of chips, but they mean nothing — you got to invent your own rules.

Among those chips, I found a surf green-colored micro SD card. I put it into my Switch, and the whole new game opened: a hybrid of Mario and Subway Surfers where I’m being chased by half-Peach, half-Thomas the Tank Engine.

When we reached the end, we lost our furry friend. But he was hiding in a dresser drawer, with a sex doll. Not an inflatable one, mind you, and not a silicone one either: the material resembled that of Barbie dolls.

She was a human-size, pretty Caucasian girl. I talked to her. Yes, she could talk, and the voice wasn’t robotic — she was definitely alive. Despite being a completely empty shell, she was conscious, albeit very dumb.

Her name was Near. This is the joke she told me:

— Knock-knock.

— Who’s there?

— Andy.
— Andy who?
— Andy who was imprisoned for sexual assault five years ago, duh!

0h, saIesf0rce…
As they say, if it's n0t 0n saIesf0rce, it doesn't exist? SaIesf0rce presents itself as n0 Iess than a majestic d0g 0f Jupiter. But t0 be honest with y0u, it's I0wer even than a skunk, n0t worthy even t0 be called a d0g 0f PIut0!

Even AWS has better UX than Twilio.

Is it just me, or companies using the word “supercharge” is cringe? Supercharge your coding skills, supercharge your productivity, supercharge this, supercharge that. WTF does that even mean?

2019 was 5 years ago.

was just sitting there, chilling
my Mac suddenly says Google LLC added a background item
not adding it right after I install your browser but rather at a random moment when I least expect it for sure looks shady to me

“Does god exist?”, I typed into a green terminal window after granting GPT-7 root access to our grid. “…now it does”, echoed from every speaker.

evil can be described

war can be explained

murder can be understood


but pure chaos can’t



out there, millimeters away from the edge of the universe, Iies what wiII take your sanity should you attempt to comprehend it.

Praying to every deity, I begged to spare me, to never kill my inner child. To never make me grow up into materialistic mindset that punishes curiosity and denies miracles.
It seems like my wish was granted. Am I naive? Sure. Do I have kid ego? Sometimes.
But I never wanted to be someone else.

If you type “vs” (versus) in a wrong input source on a Russian-English keyboard, it will spell “мы” — literally “us”. A bit of a cheesy take, but we should be “us” instead of “vs”.

If you want to improve your life, but your mental health and energy levels are too low to exercise, start with hygiene.

Take showers every day, continuously lowering the water temperature. Use dental floss and tongue scraper. Brush your teeth twice a day. Wash your face every morning and every evening. Use evidence-based skincare products: adapalene, panthenol, SPF 50+ sunscreen. Keep your toes and nails tidy. Shave routinely.

According to Nadya Tolokonnikova, a prominent Russian dissident who was imprisoned, denying basic hygiene is a _very_ efficient way of breaking someone into submission that is often applied to dissidents in Russian prisons. So, doing a reverse of that should improve mental health.

Divide and conquer is a brilliant form of control. There are entities that benefit from making us fight each other, no matter the reason. From choosing a Linux distro to choosing a political party: everything goes.

If you hate JavaScript, hug your fellow JavaScript developer today. Tell them they're doing good.

Spread peace and unity. Let peace forever hold her way over the Earth.

Is it just me, or does it seem like worse languages get more usage than better ones? Like, how many people know Haskell vs. Python? A lot of people dislike JavaScript, but why is it so damn popular then? And why didn't presumably superior Dart replaced it on the web, even with Google's support and lobbying?

I think the reason is that every language has vocal critics, and when a lot of people use a language, there will be a lot of such critics. When a certain critical mass (no pun intended) is accumulated, it begins to look like everything you can read online is bad things. Of course, the language being worse than some other hip language doesn't help.

What do you think?

7 day streak of running 2.5 km every morning!

One of my favorite old jokes:
If you wish to know who rules you, seek those whom you're not allowed to criticize… We should rise up against children with leukemia!

There are drones patrolling the Antarctic sky. When your plane gets too close, the drone fires up its jet engine and grabs you by the wing.

The drone's engine can overpower any small plane there is. It then proceeds to escort you towards the Antarctic base. Your safety during the transport is guaranteed by the drone's onboard missiles and decoy flares.

Once you reach the base, you get apprehended, imprisoned and tortured. A powerful pathological infosignal is then dispersed via the social media that makes anyone who knew you forget that you ever existed.

There were zero successful escapes.

The best video game ever in your opinion? Mine is Half-Life 2.

Kiki day:
- wake up
- pills
- run 2.5k
- join my wife at the local sports ground
- booty exercise
- pick trash off the ground while she finishes her workout
- shower
- refactoring
- work
- working on my own projects. If I'm not in the mood for that, then here's the schedule:
- - Monday: iron clothes
- - Tuesday: eliminate infoclutter
- - Wednesday: tidying up online presence
- - Thursday: writing
- - Friday: cooking
- - Saturday: cleaning, changing bedsheets
- - Sunday: rest
- pills
- sleep

Do you own a smart tv? Do you like it?

Ran 2.5 km today!

Cat of the day — another one we helped rescue!

I want to teach you two peacekeeping methods that can help you diffuse difficult situations.
Method 1: before engaging in a heated internet argument, ask yourself: “What is my absolutely best case scenario endgame here?”
To me, it’s often something like “Yes, you’re right, my entire life up to this point was a lie, I will read everything you wrote as a prayer every night to strive to be like you in every way.” Yes, this will definitely make my day, but in the grand scheme of things I won’t care. So why settle for less? The grand prize of this special olympics isn’t worth the effort.
Method 2: reading the intent. When you feel uncomfortable talking to someone, ask yourself: “What is their intent? Why are they saying me this?”
If the intent is to tear you down, see method 1. Anyone can be fooled, no exceptions. You losing an argument doesn’t diminish who you are, at all. If you fear it will, then work with your fear directly. It probably has nothing to do with this one argument.
If the intent is to help you, but they don’t know how to explain it without sounding hostile, then discard their tone. Read the message, accept it and tell them “Yes, you’re right, I get what you’re saying.”
Saying “I was wrong” immediately makes people perceive you as brave. It’s the virtue of strong people to be able to admit defeat.